The “strong ontological” reductionist believes that nothing exists outside of math, but how does he know that? The “weak ontological” one believes the opposite statement, which has the same problem. The “strong scientific” guy disbelieves in quantum mechanics, which makes me wonder if he could have chosen a different name for himself. And the “weak scientific” one believes that prediction is impossible “in principle”, rather than impossible under currently known physics.
I’m a pretty simple kind of reductionist: I believe that all observed and mental phenomena can be fully reduced to physics—that complex arrangements of bricks don’t magically gain new properties that can’t be explained in terms of the bricks themselves. But I know that deep physics has a tendency to turn out really, really weird, so I don’t profess to believe or disbelieve any such statements as “we are nothing more than mathematical concepts” or “we can never know the future”.
All four positions are too strong for me.
The “strong ontological” reductionist believes that nothing exists outside of math, but how does he know that? The “weak ontological” one believes the opposite statement, which has the same problem. The “strong scientific” guy disbelieves in quantum mechanics, which makes me wonder if he could have chosen a different name for himself. And the “weak scientific” one believes that prediction is impossible “in principle”, rather than impossible under currently known physics.
I’m a pretty simple kind of reductionist: I believe that all observed and mental phenomena can be fully reduced to physics—that complex arrangements of bricks don’t magically gain new properties that can’t be explained in terms of the bricks themselves. But I know that deep physics has a tendency to turn out really, really weird, so I don’t profess to believe or disbelieve any such statements as “we are nothing more than mathematical concepts” or “we can never know the future”.
Well said cousin_it, and it matches my opinion as well.